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MSU Dairy Farmer of the Year reflects on career
A Michigan dairy farmer says the past year of good prices have helped to catch up on some long-awaited improvements.
Tony Jandernoa says it has been more than challenging to be a dairy farmer over the past decade.
“It was a tough five or seven years stretch where dairying in Michigan was not fun, it just was a tough road,” he shares.
Since 2015, Michigan has lost more than half of its licensed dairy farms.
“In the last year I’ll say for sure, we finally were able to make a little money and get catch up on some of the stuff that you just let go for too long,” he says. “We’re hoping we can have a good run for a little stretch here because we need one.”
The first-generation farmer tells Brownfield he started milking 100 cows in 1987 and has grown to 5,000 cows across three farms as more family members have joined the business.
“The price of everything, the price of a new tractor, you can’t hardly buy one if you don’t milk a fair number of cows, so that sort of what pushed us,” he explains.
Jandernoa says he’s excited to be adding a renewable natural gas anaerobic digester to one of his sites in the next year to help reduce emissions, local food waste, and the dairy’s energy costs.
The St. Johns farmer was recently named the 2025 Dairy Farmer of the Year by Michigan State University’s Department of Animal Science.
Photo courtesy of MSU.